On 62 (and earlier?) the holes where the screws pass through the panels have some cone or funnel shaped shaped washers. The spout of the funnel is long enough that it hits the door before the panel is tight on several of the screw positions. On the door panels i removed, these washers appeared to have been crimped in place with some sort of tool. I can trim the ends of the "funnel" off with a dremmil tool, but is there a better way to do it? I tried crimping the washers with a small ball peen hammer as an arbor, but he result was less than satisfactory.
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Re: C1 door panel installation
Ed,
I use a small nutdriver on the rear to crimp the grommet over. The key to doing this proper, is to cut a head off a # 10 phillips head oval head screw and use it on the outside of the grommet to maintain the correct shape of the cone. I put the screw on a small anvil with the head against the anvil and set the outside cone over the screw head. Then I took a small nutdriver (1/4", if I remember right), and peened over the tail of the grommet. I used a tapered punch that I ground the end off of to start the flare on the tail, but after it was flared out, I just crimped it down with the nutdriver. The flaring tool that I used was just an old air chisel punch that I ground the end off of until it sust barely fit inside the I.D. of the tail. One of these days I am going to make a tool similar to a tool that installs grommets in tarps that can be used in a one-step process. There are many vendors out there that sell just an inverted cone with no tail because of this very problem, but then the cone can go too deep into the door panel material and stand the chance of breaking through the vinyl.
Regards, John McGraw
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